Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Back from the Morgue - Mad Sin in Australia

This week Mad Sin kicks off their long awaited Australian tour with their first show in Brisbane on Thursday night featuring Casino Rumbles, Mouthguard and The Vampers. The German psychobilly legends are playing six shows across Australia which are sure to be wild and with a possibility of pyrotechnics. I spoke to singer Koefte de Ville about 'Burn and Rise', Psychobilly and Adam Ant.

Angie Hurlock

Released in 2010, 'Burn and Rise' is the eleventh album from Germany's Mad Sin. With an aim to return to more of a rockabilly sound with this latest album, the songs 'Nine Lives' and 'Sex, Love, Blood'n'Death' firmly cement the rockabilly roots of Mad Sin. “We started working on it [Burn and Rise] and it was our plan to get back to our roots which are more rockabilly and early punk stuff. The album we did before we went a little too far with the sound and it was too fast.” During the writing of the album, Mad Sin suffered the loss friends which affected the album making it very autobiographical and influencing the title. “A lot of shit happened to us, a lot of people died, shit happened in our private lives when we were in the process of writing the songs. We didn't want to do a dark album with depressive sort of stuff. We thought the people that we lost wouldn't want that, they would want us to have a big fucking party. So we came up with the idea of calling 'Burn and Rise', burn the old shit and rise up again”.

Despite most songs on the album being written in English, there are a handful of songs in Koefte's native tongue, German. Mostly Mad Sin songs are in English to reach a larger audience however, with the emotive nature of 'Burn and Rise', Koefte found the words for some songs felt more organic in German. “There is one song, 'Für Immer' which is really a love song. I split up with my girlfriend when all that shit was happening and I wrote the song in German because it came from my heart, it came naturally. Geisterfahrer, I always wanted to do that song because we just love that title. Geisterfahrer, which is the word for the guys that drive on the wrong side of the road, its kinda a metaphoric song and it kinda had to be in German. I think on the next album there will be some more songs in German, because people enjoy it here”.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Mad Sin and their influence on modern psychobilly, but the scene was almost non existent in the early 80s when Koefte first became interested in the rockabilly scene. “ I started when psychobilly wasn't even there, as a rockabilly teddy boy. That was like 1981 and in Germany there were no psychobilly bands. I was listening to a lot of old rockabilly stuff, I was eleven years old when I started and I had no money. From there on it kinda evolved, it was like Psychobilly was the new thing with rockabilly an old style and there was new rockabilly, those cat kinda bands which were a little more soft. But then the Meteors came with their very first album. We started to be at first very rockabilly and psychobilly came later. We changed our clothes from traditional teddy boy gear to jeans and boots and stud belts and stuff like this and we had the flat tops, you know stuff like that. Berlin was a big underground scene at the time, a lot of street fights between the gangs, but everyone was into music”. On the 20 years of Sin album Mad Sin cover Adam Ant's 1985 hit, “Vive Le Rock”. Despite Koefte finding Adam Ant a little too mainstream during the 80's, it was a song they had wanted to cover for a while. “I always liked some [Adam Ant] songs, I like when he was still with the Ants, 'Stand and Deliver' and 'Goody two shoes', the early stuff that was more new wave punk. But the 'Vive Le Rock' album we always liked because it had that certain rockabilly influence. You know more of the songs sounded a mix between old rockabilly and T. Rex or something like that. We just covered it and it turned out great. We just did it and we never released it really, it was just for us and somehow it never seemed to fit on anything. But we thought with the 20 years thing we could put it on there because it had never been released”.

This November hails the first time that Mad Sin have come to Australia and they're looking forward to putting on some great shows to some wild audiences. “It's kinda surreal for us to go to Australia. We started here in Berlin and now we've evolved and seen half of the world, but we never expected Australia so that's a very big thing for us in a way for making it with the music. Also we like a lot of Australian people we've met here in Europe, America and Japan and we're friends with The Fireballs and Zombie Ghost Train. They [Zombie Ghost Train] are good friends of ours, we've known them a long time. When they first came over here I tried to get them a record deal when they only had the demo tape going on and it kinda worked out. So you know all those people we've met from Australia are really cool, so we're really looking forward to partying after the shows. We will have some days off and we definitely want to see the beach and all that and also the nature there”. Australian audiences can also expect an amazing live show from Mad Sin with each show different to the last. “What we give is what we feel and what we are. Unfortunately I think we cannot do our fire show cos we have some things going on where we set fire to the bass at certain parts of the show, but I don't think we are allowed to do this in the venues over there as far as I know. We're going to try to do it. But anyway its going to be very wild and spontaneous and different. We're not one of those bands where the audience expects the same things at each show. So you better come to all the shows. If you want to see the whole picture you have to come to all the shows”.

Mad Sin are doing six dates on this Australian tour heading down the east coast and even making it to Perth, so make sure get a long to at least one to experience and celebrate the legendary psychobilly of Mad Sin. “I just want to say after 25 years we are ready to go over and if you're into this type of music, we hope to see you there and I would appreciate to see you there. Offer us some drinks after the show, if we're not too tired, we're going to be there and will party with you guys”.